Photography in everyday life

Chiefly because it costs nothing. In the days of film, every press of the button cost money, so people saved their shots for weddings and holidays. Now the camera is in your pocket and storage is practically unlimited, so we photograph lunch, receipts and parking spaces. I'd say a lot of modern photos aren't memories at all; they're notes, or messages to friends that happen to be pictures. As for whether photographing a moment spoils it, I think it can. At concerts you see hundreds of people watching the stage through a small screen, recording a clip they'll never play back, and they've swapped the actual experience for a poor copy of it. That said, I wouldn't be too purist. One or two pictures taken quickly can anchor a memory that would otherwise fade, and my family treasures a blurry photo of my grandfather laughing far more than any perfect portrait. The trick is to take the picture and then put the phone away. Will professionals still be needed? Yes, although fewer of them. Phones have already wiped out much of the routine work, such as passport photos and simple product shots, and software can now generate a convincing image from a sentence. What survives is the work where trust and judgement matter: a wedding you can't restage, or photojournalism, where the whole point is that a real person was standing there when it happened.